Telling -- and retelling
I am teaching Holocaust to my students in world religion at Glendale Community College. A daunting endeavor, especially to a diverse group of 20-somethings whose world view -- and life experience -- is very different than mine.
Where to begin -- and how to make it relevant to their world?
We begin by talking about persecution, what it meant to be a Jew in Germany in the 1930s as Hitler’s deadly plan began to unfold. We talk about the gradual abrogation of rights, limits on where Jews could work, where they could go to school, where they could live. We talk about how the Jewish world grew increasingly smaller, increasingly tenuous, increasingly dangerous.
“Does anybody have a story to share from their own families that might be an example of religious, racial or ethnic discrimination?” I ask.
A couple of hands go up.
I call on a student who usually does not speak. A shy, dark-haired young woman, who when she responds, has a decidedly Spanish accent.
“What about the immigrants?” she asks.
“What about the people who are afraid to go out of their homes?”
I stop. It is almost a revelation to me to hear the student make that connection.
We hear it often within the Jewish community, our history of persecution, our understanding of what it means to be a stranger in a strange land, or, even worse, in Germany in those years, of being a stranger in your own land, and how that should inform our position on immigration reform. But I don’t expect to hear it in a classroom in Glendale, Arizona, from a young woman who probably has had little, if any, exposure, to Jews and Jewish history much less Holocaust. But I do.
It resonates later in the week, in Deborah Sussman Susser’s column about the AJC initiative on immigration reform, and, later, in my story about Israel’s diverse ethnic mix and the program created by the TIPS partnership that hopes to instill newfound confidence and pride in the immigrant women of Kiryat Malachi and Hof Ashkelon, Phoenix’s partnership communities in Israel. Yes, what about the immigrants?
There is a relevance, and a power, in our stories and their stories, and, yes, a continuing imperative not only to tell and retell them, but to use them as the impetus to write the stories to come.
03 Nov, 2009 > Comment - 0 -
Go forth
The holiday season came and went in a blur, ushering in a welcome flurry of fall activity. After the slow pace of the long, hot summer, there is something refreshing and energizing about not only the beginning of a new Jewish year but a new academic year and a new communal year as well.
Sitting in high holiday services, with time to reflect, I thought about the comfort that comes from the continuous cycling of the year, its very predictability, like clockwork, first Rosh Hashanah, then Yom Kippur and then Sukkot. Too, looking around the congregation where we’ve been members for almost 30 years, I counted the blessings of family, friends and community.
And yet, it is too easy to slip from one year to the next, cosseted by what is comfortable, predictable, familiar. Even if we sit in the same seats in the same shul, there is inherent in the message of a new year a push to go forth to find new ways to renew ourselves.
There are a plethora of possibilities to choose from, classes, lectures, programs to excite the mind and restore the soul. Even with the economy in the doldrums, there are lots of opportunities for learning and growing, many free or at nominal charge. Next week’s Ethnic Flavors of Israel might be a delicious one to consider, and the upcoming Valley of the Sun Jewish Community Center Book and Cultural Arts Fair is another. The Bureau of Jewish Education offers ongoing programs, and many of our local congregations offer a variety of ways to stretch your mind or rejuvenate your spirit.
Check out Jewish News listings and coverage during the year and consider venturing in a new direction in the months ahead. When the high holidays roll around next year, you won’t be the same person, even if you are sitting in the same seat.
25 Oct, 2009 > Comment - 0 -
Irish power and the Jews
Amongst the many heartfelt tributes to the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy last week, the Jewish community remembered him as a steadfast friend of Israel and a partner in the movement to free Soviet Jewry. It is a testament not only to the late senator, but to the very system of government we hold dear, that Kennedy was such an active proponent of so-called Jewish interests and that his influence on behalf of American Jews could impact U.S. policy. That’s just the point that Prof. Henry L. Feinberg makes in his incisive new book, Jewish Power in America, Myth and Reality, reviewed last week in Jewish News. Feinberg, an eminent professor of American Jewish history, uses a historical lens to look at the evolution of so-called Jewish power in America. He makes two very important arguments: first, Jews by dint of their history of oppression and persecution, have always worked to understand the lines of authority in government and use them for self-protection. So we are as a people keyed into learning how the system works and proactive in wielding whatever influence it will afford. Secondly, and more importantly, Feinberg shows that in America, Jewish interest will go only so far in determining national policy as it is aligned with national interest. To suggest that the government -- or the media or the banks, for that matter -- pander to what the Jews want is patently false and blatantly anti-Semitic.
Jewish power, as the late senator’s legacy attests, is only as real as its ability to coalesce with what is in the best interests of the nation.
And that can be very powerful indeed.
04 Sep, 2009 > Comment - 1 -
Are you there?
I often wondered if what I wrote landed in the bottom of the bird cage where, even if it went unread, it was put to good use. Yet over the years, I’ve been lucky enough to hear from many readers who’ve taken the time to pick up the phone, write a note, or, more recently, shoot off an email, to let me know that they actually have read what I’ve written. Sometimes they agreed with what I’ve had to say, and sometimes they didn’t. And sometimes they wrote to say that my words resonated, evoking a treasured memory, a common experience, a shared insight. While I’ve appreciated their kind words, what I most valued was the real, human connection my words could spark, the aha moment, the incredulous, hey, you feel that way too, the stuff that binds us together.
In a world that moves all too fast, with way too much information for any of us to process, it still amazes me that someone would take the time to write -- and connect.
So the chance to blog for Jewish News seemed a perfect way to multiply the potential for those ahas, or oh mys. More writing, I thought, more readers, more interchange.
Alas, that has not been the case, at least from the dismal rate of response to my blog. Only two comments, one left by a loyal cousin from Brooklyn on my Facebook page, another in the form of an email from a reader with an interest in Sephardic music (and children with CDs to market).
So, if you are reading this, I’m putting out a sort of Judy Blume-like plea (you remember the “Are you there God, it's me Margaret?” preteen classic) and ask you to just let me know.
Hey readers, are you there?
21 Aug, 2009 > Comment - 0 -
Rock on
Spotted in the airport recently, a 60ish guy -- both in age and generation, I presume -- sporting a tie-dyed T-shirt, its faded whirls of color and ragged neckline suggesting repeated wearings and washings. He strolled through the terminal, graying pony tail swaying, worn Birkenstocks flip-flopping, oblivious, it seemed, to the passage of time, past and present. Maybe he was just too tuned in to the music on his iPod, probably Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin, or some other relic rocker. A 1960s throwback to the summer of peace and love, I thought, one of the last remains from the Age of Aquarius, recalled this weekend with the 40th anniversary of Woodstock.
Yet though I could relate to the psychedelic hues, the now silver-streaked hairstyle, and the Birks, true be told, on August 15, 1969, I was nowhere near Yasgur’s Farm and its three day celebration of raucous rock ‘n roll and youthful exuberance. Nah, I was just returned from my honeymoon, settling into a new apartment and most likely writing and re-writing lesson plans for my first day of school as a new teacher.
And yet, even as I began my adult life on a decidedly more conventional path, I could not have escaped -- nor would I have wanted to -- the maelstrom of revolutionary change that whorled through the 1960s. Civil rights, political protest, women’s liberation, sexual freedom, you name it, the world was a’ changin -- and has never been the same since. It was an exhilarating time.
The ensuing decades have seen the pendulum swing, moderating the movement for cataclysmic change with more conservative impulses, and yet, the dynamism of those years, the intense energy, the promise, the hope that we can make the world a better place, continues to live on, resonating for me, as I moved through my adult life, with a decidedly Jewish beat.
Peace and love, you bet.
Rock on.
14 Aug, 2009 > Comment - 0 -
Love and marriage
Forty years ago, as a 20-something bride-to-be planning a wedding with my then and now Prince Charming, I recall our rabbi counseling us to choose a date either before or after a three-week period when Jewish weddings traditionally did not take place. Without questioning the practice, we chose August 2, just after the prohibited time.
Years later -- and light years ahead on the Jewish learning curve -- we learned that the mid-summer chuppah hiatus had little to do with wedding planning and more to do with understanding the arc of Jewish history and the cycle of the Jewish year. Weddings don’t take place from the 17th of Tammuz until the 9th of Av, a period of mourning for the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem which occurred on Tisha B’Av.
Nearly another decade or so later in our happily ever after -- wishing for our children to find their own besherts and embark on happily married lives -- did we learn of Tu B’Av, the Jewish Valentine’s Day. It comes just six days after Tisha B’Av -- this year on Aug. 5 -- and trades the destruction and despair of that holiday with the promise of new love and new life. In ancient times, unmarried daughters dressed in white and cavorted in the fields at midnight. In more recent times, romance is in the air, and I imagine matchmakers spinning their rolodexes with abandon and Jewish wedding sites deluged with millions of hits.
From bitter to sweet, from sadness to joy.
How innately Jewish is that?
07 Aug, 2009 > Comment - 0 -
O Jerusalem!
If inconsolable loss could be captured in letters and words, it would be written in Hebrew as elchah. The heart rending cry -- Elchah! -- opens the book of Lamentations, read as we mark the somber day of mourning, Tisha B’Av, this week. The holiday laments the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, using achingly poetic language to convey overwhelming sadness and despair.
Lamentations evokes the city of gold, now in flames, ravaged by the marauding Babylonians, and again, the city of David, in ruins, destroyed by the Romans. Yet the book also reminds of the Jerusalem that rose from the ashes, the Jerusalem of today, the city that remains the spiritual center of Jewish life, and holds the promise of Jewish life to come.
Rabbi Ian Pear, in his compelling book, “The Accidental Zionist,” reviewed in Jewish News makes a passionate case for the role of Jerusalem, and the Jewish state, in developing strong Jewish identity. Pear, who grew up in Phoenix, is the founder of Shir Hadash, a congregation in Jerusalem, where he resides with his wife, Rachel, and their three daughters.
In an email to Jewish News last fall, just as his book came out, Pear explained that he wrote the book after speaking to hundreds of young adults in the Birthright Israel program, many sincerely seeking to connect with their Jewish roots but dismayed by the negative news reports about Israel, disturbed by the guilt or fear evoked in the institutional Jewish world to combat that negativity.
He wrote the book, he said, to offer an alternative vision, ripe with promise and rife with the universal values that animate today’s young people.
“I want to emphasize not our scarred past but our glorious future,” emailed the dynamic young rabbi.
A remembrance of Jerusalem past -- and the Jerusalem yet to be.
28 Jul, 2009 > Comment - 0 -
Grave memories
Three local high school students solemnly placed stones on the grave of a man they did not know.
The students, part of a Phoenix Country Day School group traveling in central and eastern Europe earlier this summer, had been asked to go to the cemetery in Prague by Holocaust survivor Helen Handler. The grave they visited was that of Handler’s father, Bernard Weinstein, who died almost a decade before Handler, her grandparents, her mother and her two brothers were swept up by the Nazis and transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Handler is the only member of her family to survive; her father’s grave the only grave she has to visit.
Visiting a grave is an act of remembrance for Jews, leaving a stone on its surface an expression of respect for the deceased and a testament to the worth of that life. For a Holocaust survivor, whose family members were exterminated by the Nazis, there are no cemeteries to visit, no gravestones to mark. So the site of any grave is infused with the memories of all those who perished. That meaning was not lost on the youngsters
who honored Handler’s request and paid their respects at Weinstein’s grave in Prague, as retold in this week’s issue of Jewish News.
“This is the only member of her family who has a grave,” Jeremy Abdo, one of the students, told Jewish News.
Listening to Jeremy and later speaking to Helen, I could not help thinking of the story of Joseph’s bones, the Biblical recounting of Joseph’s request that his progeny “carry up my bones” and the ultimate fulfillment of that obligation almost 400 years later. The midrash tells how after Joseph’s death in Egypt, his remains are embalmed, buried in a river, exhumed as the Israelites are hurrying to flee from slavery with Pharoah’s soldiers in pursuit. The bones are transported through the 40 years wandering in the desert, eventually buried, so the book of Joshua tells us, in Shechem, in the Promised Land.
From slavery to freedom, from Egypt to Israel, the bones are carried, then buried, both a sign of respect for Joseph and the promise of the continuing Jewish story.
And while the obligation to bury the dead remains, so does the hope for the future endure, perhaps in the experience of a few students in Prague who paid their respects to the dead, placing a few stones on a grave, and understanding what it would mean to a survivor at home.
24 Jul, 2009 > Comment - 0 -